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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27592306">Kathryn’s Parting Gift</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercia12591/pseuds/Mercia12591'>Mercia12591</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tales from the Ancestral Tudor Court [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Spanish Princess (TV), The Tudors (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:41:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>683</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27592306</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercia12591/pseuds/Mercia12591</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry VIII dies and finds himself in the Ancestral Realms, a dimension more ‘solid’ than the Ghostly Realms, but more ethereal than earth. He is shocked to learn that Kathryn left him a parting gift, before departing to pay a debt in purgatory…his debt.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Henry VIII - Relationship, Kathryn of Aragon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tales from the Ancestral Tudor Court [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2007481</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Kathryn’s Parting Gift</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Kathryn’s Parting Gift</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>White Hall Palace – Ancestral Realm’s London - 1547</strong>
</p><p> </p><p><strong>H</strong><strong>enry VIII </strong>was stunned, to put it mildly, the heaven in which he found himself looked and felt nothing like he’d been taught to expect it would. The world in which he found himself after death was more solid than he could ever have imagined it and Henry felt more alive than he had in many decades. He was young again and vital as he had been in 1509 when he first took the throne.</p><p>His glittering court at White Hall Palace and beyond looked much the same as it had in those early years of his reign, but there were differences as well, for in this otherworldly realm courtiers and royals from across the entire reign of Henry VIII and beyond mixed and mingled freely.</p><p>Four of Henry’s wives were here, but not the one he now realized was the most important, his Queen was in purgatory, paying a debt not her own. He still found himself stunned at the knowledge that Kathryn would enter purgatory in his stead, more shocking still was the fact that the deathbed kiss he had shared with Kathryn had been real and that his Queen had used that kiss to enshrine him in her Sovereignty. As Jacquetta so succinctly put it: “She made you the king of these Ancestral Realms and in such a way that none could ever contest your right to the throne. In the end, she gave up her own power to secure yours. Constant to the end…”</p><p>“Don’t say it like that,” Henry said, “she will return, nothing in life could break her, purgatory will not either. She will return, to her daughter… <em>And to me,</em>” he added the last part silently, avoiding Jacquetta Rivers and Elizabeth Woodville’s all too knowing gazes.</p><p>Apparently, those released from Purgatory, seldom had enough energy left to return to the Ancestral Realms, often passing straight onto the ghostly plains, and sometimes even into oblivion.</p><p>Whenever his thoughts wandered in such dark directions, Henry felt real fear, a future, an eternity without his True Queen was not something Henry VIII was willing to contemplate and to his credit, he had tried to get Kathryn out when he first learned of her fate. He tried to take his rightful place in the realm of torment and purification, but the deal Kathryn of Aragon had struck to save him was irreversible, unbreakable and he was forced to continue in the knowledge that someone else was baring the punishment he deserved. It turned out to be torture of a most acute nature, leaving Henry to wonder whether the Ancestral Realms were not in fact his own purgatory.</p><p>He saw Anne Boleyn with Henry Percy and given his one-time obsession with the woman the king was surprised to discover that he felt…nothing, no jealousy, no envy, not even the neutral fondness he retained for Jane Seymour and even Catherine Howard. There was nothing but regret in the clear knowledge that he broke his country, tarnished his legacy, and broke the heart of the woman he adored, all for an illusion, a momentary passion which had left only ashes in its wake.</p><p>“I should have known better,” he confessed to his father and Charlie Brandon one night after a great feast.  </p><p>“It wasn’t all your fault son,” Henry VII made an awkward attempt at consoling the grieving king, but Henry VIII would not be consoled. He finally understood with glaring, cruel clarity just how much he was to blame, how much he could never atone for. In the dead of the otherworldly night, he spends hours on his knees in the deserted chapel royal at White Hall Palace, praying to What or Who? He had no idea. Henry only knew he had to do something, anything, or he would go mad. And so, Henry finally learned how Kathryn must have felt all those years, praying, begging for a living son that never came. Sometimes, it seemed, prayers were doomed to go unanswered and unheard… Sometimes there simply was no absolution.</p><p>
  
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